pronunciation

the act or result of producing the sounds of speech, including articulation, stress, and intonation, often with reference to some standard of correctness or acceptability: They are arguing about the pronunciation of “forte” again.

His pronunciation retains charming traces of his early years in Ireland.

2.

an accepted standard of the sound and stress patterns of a syllable, word, phrase, etc.: He said the pronunciation of “curl” is [kurl] not [koil].

3.

the conventional patterns of treatment of the sounds of a language:

the pronunciation of French.

4.

a phonetic transcription of a given word, sound, etc.: The pronunciation of “pheasant” is [fez-uh nt].

5.

Rare. an act or instance of declaring publicly; pronouncement:

It was but the latest pronunciation of the political double-standard uttered in the course of this scandal.

It may seem odd for the pronunciation of this very word to be an issue; the pronunciation of pronunciation should be evident from its spelling. The vowel in the second syllable is u, said as in the word up. It is not the diphthong ou, as in ouch. However, for some people, the impulse to retain the sound pattern of the familiar verb pronounce is too strong to resist, and we hear this word said as if it were spelled p-r-o-n-o-u-n-c-i-a-t-i-o-n all too frequently. All this is a reminder that the entire subject of “correct” pronunciation is fraught with controversy. Changes from what we heard growing up are often resisted with surprisingly passionate scorn. And yet we know that language is constantly changing, and that many pronunciations once attacked as ignorant are now accepted without question in even the most educated circles. For example, we hear [skiz-uh m] /ˈskɪz əm/ (Show IPA) as well as the older [siz-uh m] /ˈsɪz əm/ for schism, and [fawr-tey] /ˈfɔr teɪ/ as well as the historically correct [fawrt] /fɔrt/ for the sense of forte meaning “something that one excels in” (see Pronunciation note at forte1. ). And stress patterns change with new generations: increasingly, [kuh m-pair-uh-buh l] /kəm pɛər ə bəl/ is overtaking [kom-per-uh-buh l] /ˈkɒm pər ə bəl/ for comparable. Language experts seize the opportunity to note and study these changes; language innovation can be fascinating--even exciting. But some deviations from the current norm will not become part of an accepted standard, and as long as the way one speaks remains a marker of one's education, or one's ability to perform well in school or in a prospective job, it is best to avoid misguided pronunciations like [pruh-noun-see-ey-shuh n] /prəˌnaʊn siˈeɪ ʃən/ .

early 15c., "mode in which a word is pronounced," from Middle French prononciation and directly from Latin pronuntiationem (nominative pronuntiatio) "act of speaking, utterance, delivery," also "proclamation, public declaration," noun of action from past participle stem of pronuntiare "announce" (see pronounce).

In this dictionary slashes (/../) bracket phonetic pronunciations of words not found in a standard English dictionary. The notation, and many of the pronunciations, were adapted from the Hacker's Jargon File. Syllables are separated by dash or followed single quote or back quote. Single quote means the preceding syllable is stressed (louder), back quote follows a syllable with intermediate stress (slightly louder), otherwise all syllables are equally stressed. Consonants are pronounced as in English but note: ch soft, as in "church" g hard, as in "got" gh aspirated g+h of "bughouse" or "ragheap" j voiced, as in "judge" kh guttural of "loch" or "l'chaim" s unvoiced, as in "pass" zh as "s" in "pleasure" Uppercase letters are pronounced as their English letter names; thus (for example) /H-L-L/ is equivalent to /aych el el/. /Z/ is pronounced /zee/ in the US and /zed/ in the UK (elsewhere?). Vowels are represented as follows: a back, that ah father, palm (see note) ar far, mark aw flaw, caught ay bake, rain e less, men ee easy, ski eir their, software i trip, hit i: life, sky o block, stock (see note) oh flow, sew oo loot, through or more, door ow out, how oy boy, coin uh but, some u put, foot *r fur, insert (only in stressed syllables; otherwise use just "r") y yet, young yoo few, chew [y]oo /oo/ with optional fronting as in `news' (/nooz/ or /nyooz/) A /*/ is used for the `schwa' sound of unstressed or occluded vowels (often written with an upside-down `e'). The schwa vowel is omitted in unstressed syllables containing vocalic l, m, n or r; that is, "kitten" and "colour" would be rendered /kit'n/ and /kuhl'r/, not /kit'*n/ and /kuhl'*r/. The above table reflects mainly distinctions found in standard American English (that is, the neutral dialect spoken by TV network announcers and typical of educated speech in the Upper Midwest, Chicago, Minneapolis/St.Paul and Philadelphia). However, we separate /o/ from /ah/, which tend to merge in standard American. This may help readers accustomed to accents resembling British Received Pronunciation. Entries with a pronunciation of `//' are written-only. (1997-12-10)